Diablo 2 & Sorceress builds

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Wordplay describes one way of building a successful sorceress: Energy Shield.

I prefer to build my sorceresses without Energy Shield and without Energy Shield I never put any points in Energy. Instead put enough dex for max block, enough str for equipment and the rest in Vitality.
There is good reason to go for max block with a sorc (even if you need a lot of dex) and that is because points in Vitality only give 2 life each for a sorc.

 

And 75% block = hit only 1/4 of the time = 75% more life. Much better deal then the 2 hitpoints you get per vit point.

 

Agreed. There are only a few classes that really benefit from pumping vitality, and they are the ones that are melee oriented. Naturally, Barbarians should pump vitality. Not only do they get 4 life for every point spent, I've never heard of a high level barbarian that doesn't have 20 skill points sunk into battle orders, meaning that 4:1 ratio becomes that much greater.

The other reason that block is the way to go is with a sorceress, no matter how much you pump vitality, most hell hits will kill you anyway. Paladins and amazons can get over 1000 life points. Barbarians can get over 2000 with a high casting level in battle orders. Sorceresses are looking at something in the 500-600 life point range, and even that is only attainable by skimping on all the other stats. So those dolls will insta-kill you anyway. It doesn't matter if they do enough damage to kill you twice over or four times over.

I further agree that you only have two realistic options as a sorceress - max block (concentrating on avoiding damage) or energy shield (causing loss of mana instead of life). I've never been a big fan of energy shield myself, simply because the amount of mana in my mana pool is always so variable. Sometimes I have lots, other times not so much. Plus it totally sucks if you're fighting something that drains mana, and you see your mana bulb draining at a faster rate than potions can replace it. It is because of this that the only way I favor the energy shield route is if my primary weapon is a two-handed staff, where use of a shield is impossible.

One final word of warning. If you're going to go the block route, you only get that 75% rate while standing still or walking. If you are running, your blocking rate is 1/3 of what it is while walking, so that 75% turns into 25%. Only run on your way out of dungeons, not on the way in. If you go for max block you're not going to have a lot of stamina anyway, as you won't be spending much on vitality.

 

Also note that some attacks are unblockable! I consider max block as a complement to high life, not an "either/or" proposition.

Practically all characters should put all available points into Vitality. It's just a matter of defining what "all available points" mean. Usually it means all points left after str to wear equipment and dex to get max block.

 

That's the thing. Dolls attacks I can easily shrug off. It's 3 or 4 of them dying near me that is enough to insta-kill me. If their death throes are not blockable then max block is useles in this case.

I'm pumping Meteor too, and Fireball is at a decent level. I've already started using Meteor quite often, and it does good damage. I've found some decent gear for my merc, and Holy Freeze combined with the chilling from Orb slows just about everything to a crawl. My sorc's gear is far from perfect though.

Yeah, that's pretty much the way I'm working things out at the moment. I had to dump a good res amulet for a +skills one, and that hurt, but I'm managing. I will need to get decent res gear before Hell though, because othewise I'm not going to last more than seconds. My cold res is maxed, which is great, but Lightning is at 0, which means it'll go in the far negative in Hell. Not good.
And as for armor, I'm not even bothering. I pick all armor pieces (including gloves, boots and belts) solely for the bonuses they give, without a second's thought for defense.
I need a good one-handed weapon soon. Leaf is great, but it's not going to be very viable to use for long, and I'll need to replace it with a res shield (Ancient's Pledge is in my 2nd setup at the moment, but I'm aiming for something better).

 

Charms can get you a long way. My current char inventory full of them and they all, in total, give me about +120% to res.

Not sure, but you might be sharing your skill-points a bit too widely. IIRC, Frozen Orb receives bonuses from all previous skills, so a point not spend in ice can mean a big loss in damage throughout the game.

 

Actually Orb only gets synergy points from Ice Bolt and not any of the other ice skills, and I'm working on maxing that out (or at least getting it high enough - I may decide that pouring more points into Fire Mastery might be a better option). As for charms I've not yet found any res charms, so I guess I'll have to look harder for these. If I can find a good one-handed orb that'd be great, since I can use Ancient's Pledge with it and get my res to sky high. However at the moment I'm using Leaf, which is a staff runeword. I've not found anything that can even remotely compare to how good Leaf is, so I'm forced to stick with it.

 

Compare two builds.
Assume final level 85 which means 96 skill points.

Max Ice Bolt build
Cold tree (54)
20 FO
20 Ice Bolt
10 CM
1 Frost Nova
1 Ice Blast
1 Glacial Spike
1 Blizzard

Fire tree (39)
20 Meteor
13 Fire Ball
1 FM
1 Fire Bolt
1 Inferno
1 Blaze
1 Fire Wall
1 Warmth

Lightning Tree (3)
1 Static
1 Telekinesis
1 Teleport


No Ice Bolt synergy build
Cold tree (35)
20 FO
10 CM
1 Ice Bolt
1 Frost Nova
1 Ice Blast
1 Glacial Spike
1 Blizzard

Fire tree (58)
20 Meteor
20 Fire Ball
13 FM
1 Fire Bolt
1 Inferno
1 Blaze
1 Fire Wall
1 Warmth

Lightning Tree (3)
1 Static
1 Telekinesis
1 Teleport


Damage comparison
Ice Bolt build
Frozen Orb damage: 366-387
Meteor damage: 1920-2048
Fire Ball damage: 558-660

No Ice Bolt build
Frozen Orb damage: 267-282
Meteor damage: 3812-4066
Fire Ball damage: 1682-1909

My Conclusion
The Ice Bolt build will not have a capable fire attack in Hell and will in effect be a single tree build. In Hell the max Ice Bolt build will be very much harder to play than the No Ice Bolt build.
(Note: Skill adders will increase the damage for both builds. Analysis not included )

* * * * * * * * * *

Ancient's Pledge
Forget about that runeword. It's total rubbish!
The reason is that Ancient's Pledge gives you 48/43/48/48 resistances while if you instead put three Perfect Diamonds in that shield it would give you 57/57/57/57 resistances (19/PDiamond).

The remaining mods on Ancient's Pledge are +50% ed and 10% dmg to mana, both of which are practically irrelevant.

Make a 3 PDiamond shield!

[ September 19, 2006, 12:39: Message edited by: Earl Grey ]

 

Well, resist all charms (rainbow/kaleidoscopic/prismatic) at quite rare, but +res to a single elemental attack are super common. So common in fact that you can start finding res charms for a specific elemental attack in Act I Normal. Generally, I do not take along too many charms that just give resistnace. The ones I hold onto are the ones that give me +res in one elemental, and a bonus to either strength or dexterity. Obviously, if you do find a charm that is resist all +5%, hold onto it. I also pull more for the small charms, as the large and grand charms just take up way too much inventory space,

And by the time you get to late Nightmare or at any time during hell, it gets even more inferior. That's because starting in late Nightmare, you can find shields with 4 sockets. Now you're looking at 4 perfect diamonds that will give resist all 76%.

 

Thanks for the skill breakup Earl Grey, I'll have to change my strategy. It's quite obvious the Ice build doesn't add as much damage as I thought, and the Fire one does far more than I expected.

I've switched from Leaf (finally) to a magical orb that gives +2 to fire skills. Not as good, but I need the resists badly now. The other hand has Ancient's Pledge until I can find a 4-socket shield. I've got 4 PDiamonds already, so they're going into the shield once I get it. I did find this wonderful 4-socket shield that already had +20 to all resists... Paladin only. ARGH!

I've heard that ladder only runewords work in Single Player. Is this true? Does this mean I can make Spirit (ladder-only) in my game? If yes, is that better than 4 PDiamonds in a shield?

 

Depends of the bonus. I have four grand charms with a +24% bonus whereas all of my small charms confer about 6% apiece. Small charm takes 1 slot, grand charm 3, you do the math. But take what you get and start throwing them away only once your inventory has only 6 free slots left (and cube).

 

Ladder only runewords do not work in single player. And large charms are important because they are the only ones that can spawn with 'skillers'. (+ to skills)

 

Finally made it into Hell difficulty. Man, this is so much harder than I expected. I'm so glad I switched to putting points in Fire rather than Cold - there's too many cold immunes, and they have WAY too many hit points! The holy freeze merc is good - it means it's much easier for me to rain Meteor down on enemies.

I've got yet another orb as my main weapon now - this one adds +1 to all skills, which is good. Until now my merc has been able to take care of all monsters immune to both fire and cold, but I don't know how long this will last. I've started collecting +resist charms, but I have to say all my resists are between 0 and 10... I badly need the 4-socket shield now, and some good rares or uniques that give a boost to resists.

 

Try farming nightmare bhaal for awhile. He can drop pretty decent stuff

 

I thought about that, but I'd like to know first whether there's more chance of getting good stuff drop from Nightmare Baal compared to, say, Hell Andariel. I don't want to spend hours getting a decent item in Nightmare only to throw it away minutes later when something much better drops in Hell. Until now the number of rares I'm getting is staggering compared to even Act 5 Nightmare.

 

For your sorc nightmare Mephisto is probably the best place to run before you can run hell Mephisto. It depends on if you need the uniques which n/m Meph can drop, because if it's socketables you want, a better place would be n/m cows.
A good "early" place to run is The Pit in Tamoe Highlands (act 1 hell) but I don't think that's really suitable for a sorc.

 

You mean 'grand charms', which take 3 slots instead of 2. I don't believe large charms are of any particular use, since most small charms usually grant as much res and are smaller. And in comparison, grand charms have much nicer bonuses.

@ Ziad

My lightning-sorc is catching up. Already about to finish normal.

 

Charms come in three sizes:
Small - known in the game as Small Charms
Medium - known in the game as Large Charms
Large - known in the game as Grand Charms

 

Yes, one of the changes in v1.11 is that there are now areas in each act of Hell where the uniques in the area can drop anything. The Pit in the Tamoe Highlands is one of those areas. All of the creatures in that area can drop at least from TC 84 (next to highest) with the bosses (anything with a name, as well as champions, possessed, berserkers, etc.) capable of dropping from TC 90 (the highest TC). I disagree with Earl Grey in his saying that the Pit isn't something you can run as a sorceress, because while everything you run across in the Pit will be immune to something, there is nothing in the pits that is dual immune. The only way you'll run across anything that is immune to both fire and cold is if you get unlucky and a random boss spawns with those exact modifiers.

The other place to consider is the mausoleum in the burial grounds. They also have the same TC generation of 84/87 there. That, of course, is an undead heavy area, so they are all going to be cold immune, so the Pit might be your better option.

Hell Andariel is really not worth doing more than the once you'll be required to in order to finish Act I. The maximum TC Hell Andariel can drop from is TC 72, which isn't all that high. You have much better odds of getting something good in the Pits. In fact, other than the Pits, there's really nothing else worth running until you get to Hell Mephisto.

 

Yup meant grand charms. And a sorc with low res wont surive well in the pits. Those archers will taken you down very quickly. So i suggested nightmare bhaal till you get decent items with + resistant. And if you are planning to run cows, remember not to kill the cow king